


Guys And Dolls

by CopperBeech



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Dining at the Ritz (Good Omens), Dolls, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff, Guilt, Heaven is Terrible (Good Omens), Just everything is absurdly Soft, M/M, May Require Insulin, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Pining, Post-Scene: Church in London 1941 (Good Omens), Post-Scene: The Ritz (Good Omens), Scene: Soho 1967 (Good Omens), So Terribly Soppy, Soft Aziraphale (Good Omens), Soft Crowley (Good Omens), Soppy, The Night At Crowley's Flat (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:28:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25532869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperBeech/pseuds/CopperBeech
Summary: We’ve all been there. We’re mature, sensible grown-ups, right? Some of us literally older than the world. But something calls out to us from a children’s bookshelf, or a toy store window, and next thing you know it’s the guilty delight of a picture-book or a plushie or…Aziraphale has a secret. He sleeps. But only when he really needs to, and there's only one way he can.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 85
Kudos: 204
Collections: Good Omens (Complete works)





	Guys And Dolls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sir_Bedevere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sir_Bedevere/gifts).



> ...who commented on my fic [Plush Toys](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20519990) (of which this is something of a descendant) that he would kill a man for a little plush Aziraphale.
> 
> You can find them, as it happens. Little plush Crowleys, too. And there went my brain down a rabbit hole...
> 
> This is really just shameless manipulation of the source material, in the respected format of following (part of, anyway) the cold open timeline through the end of the show, but once I had the idea I couldn't stop myself.

As best Aziraphale could remember later, it was a spring morning in 1928 when he saw the doll. He rarely went down that stretch of Regent Street, where his usual turn ended at the Cafe Royal for afternoon tea, but he felt like a bit of a promenade today.

The last time he’d seen Crowley he’d been in Regent Street. It wasn’t long after their quarrel, and the demon had been striding down the pavement like a thundercloud with a destination, wearing the same top hat and carrying the same brass-headed cane. He’d made a point of disappearing in the crowd and found another place for tea for a long time after that. But decades had passed. He could afford to linger, and look in windows.

The doll was called Raggedy Andy, and it was, of course, quite ridiculous. You couldn’t be in the book business without hearing about things you’d never have any reason to offer in your own shop, and apparently these books about dolls had been quite the thing on both sides of the Atlantic for a bit now. He wasn’t sure if he remembered ever seeing a distinct image.

The hair was a preposterous shade of red – really, only one being on earth had hair like that. It was sat with its stuffed limbs akimbo, next to its female counterpart, against a display of rather crudely illustrated storybooks. There was something about the way those arms were extended against the stack of pasteboard covers, the innocent wheedling ( _pick me up and hold me. I can be yours to take home)_ in the stupid drawn-on expression.

Well, it was a human thing, and he _was_ the Principality in charge of Earth. Crowley had twitted him more than once about having scant time for human children (you were meant to suffer them to come unto you, but in Aziraphale’s experience they were ear-splittingly loud and left sticky fingerprints everywhere).

The doll simpered at him.

“You are absurd,” he said.

Somehow he was in the store, which was called Hamleys and apparently had been open in London even longer than his own. “How may I help you today, sir?” came a voice from behind the counter as the door chimed shut, a diminished fifth higher than the bell at A. Z. Fell’s ( _diabolus in musica:_ he recalled the Gregorian monks’ term for the interval with ironic amusement).

“The – ah – dolls in the window. With the red yarn hair.”

“The Raggedy Ann and Andy? They’ve been very popular. We’ve just gotten a shipment in.”

“Just the, um, boy doll. I believe it’s the only one, well, needed in a collection.”

“They do so want to complete the set. We have the books on the second floor, if the young person’s missing any.”

“Oh, I believe I’ve been able to keep quite up to date with. Um. Books. My own speciality.”

“Just so, then. If you’d like a gift wrapping, we can have it delivered – ”

“Quite all right – I’d like to present it myself – “

“Of course, sir. I’ll only be a moment.”

* * *

The last two decades had tired him. For years the world had bled from an artery, influenza taking over from the guns, and Heaven had been stingy about miracles. Every other review was a reprimand for what he saw only as decency; the Great Plan, certainly, but what about balm for despair, was that so costly? Everything Gabriel said had the same subtext: _I have no idea what you are doing in this position. I’d have done a much better job._ (Aziraphale winced, remembering Gabriel's last Earthly assignment.)

The gaiety after the War was forced, and fragile. Bright Young Things born just late enough to escape the carnage had looked at the world that devoured their elders, and as one decided to care for nothing and live as if tomorrow they might die. There were jazz clubs and automobiles, and liquor in quantities that the humans couldn’t handle, and fewer people seemed to care for books. (It stopped him having to thwart customers, but it still offended him on principle.) Perhaps if Crowley were with him, he’d feel differently -- he'd be quick to foil the demon’s cynicism with the delights of the world, _let me tempt you,_ their centuries-old joke. But as often as he scanned the London crowds, he never picked out that sinuous gait, that head of russet hair.

He didn’t use the upstairs flat much. Overflow books, occasionally, and clothes he’d been forced to relinquish but couldn’t quite part with, so there was a cherrywood wardrobe that he hadn’t opened since the end of the War. There was a Tabriz rug. There was a bed because you’re supposed to have a bed, scrolled brass, covered with a knitted counterpane in a leaf-and-lace pattern.

He set the box down on the bed and took out the doll. He hadn’t been scolded over miracles yet this year. Replacing the checked shirt and dungarees with a black suit counted, he supposed, for one, manifesting a tiny pair of dark spectacles for two; giving that face a far slyer smile, turning the glass irises of the button eyes a deep amber… well, it was an improvement worth making.

The doll was soft between his hands and flopped about with the helpless pathos of dolls everywhere. You’d see them in the park, where children tossed them out of prams, sprawled on the grass with frozen, bravely beaming expressions.

I’m silly, he thought, stretching out on the counterpane and holding the doll between shoulder and cheek. Crowley was partial to sleeping, wasn’t he? It seemed a dreadful waste of time, but he’d give it a try. “You can show me how to do this,” he said to the doll, who wasn’t raggedy any more and distinctly not Andy, and worked his shoes off toe to heel, whiffing dust kicked up from the white wool.

* * *

He was lying on his side when he woke up, more refreshed and optimistic than he’d been in a while. They were coming up on a dangerous decade, and Heaven had been full of warnings, but somehow he felt more able to confront it. Perhaps Crowley had something there, this business of sleeping.

He’d curled into himself so that the doll was snugged against his waistcoat by his crossed forearms, the yarn hair tickling his nose. He set it on the nightstand, fluffed and straightened the spread, and then arranged it against the pillows, as he was vaguely aware children did. The little dark spectacles had gone askew against his shoulder, and in the dim light the yellow glass of the eyebuttons almost glowed.

“You stay there where I can keep an eye on you,” he said as he replaced them properly. “I’ll be up now and again. Just to see that you don’t get into trouble.”

* * *

Sometimes he'd go up several days in a row, sometimes weeks passed. War drums began to beat again in Europe, and Heaven already had a loaded to-do list for him; he’d be getting himself into position for a ticklish blessing, thinking of all the places he had yet to go, the tiresome people he had to deal with, and imagine that dim, dusty room upstairs, the softness of the knitted coverlet against his cheek. It got him through a draining “chance” encounter with an equally exhausted member of the House of Commons at the Reform Club (the man had about decided not to stand for re-election, and once the war was underway it was clear why Heaven had wanted his spirit stiffened). And throughout one of Gabriel’s more acerbic dressings-down, _I worry about you going native, Aziraphale, you indulge in too many of their pleasures and your corporation's starting to show it,_ he found himself retreating into a distant, amused calm as he wondered what the Archangel would think of the little spectacles, the yarn hair across the pillow.

(He always squirmed away from the thought of Crowley himself on the counterpane next to him – on it, or maybe under it – warm and living, to be cherished, trusted to share his sleep. That wasn’t how it could be with demons, he’d tell himself sternly. You made truces with them, struck bargains, but you didn’t put your trust in them. They’d make appalling demands, fling harsh words at you, tear your heart with their teeth. And then make you want to come back.)

Over the years he bought the doll a few things. Hamleys supplied little shoes (the sizing required a trifling miracle) and, during an especially chilly winter, a small blanket. (The clerk thought it odd that he’d want black, and he settled for a black and red plaid, which he found stylish.) It wasn’t that he set out on shopping trips, but he’d be walking past the window and realize he’d felt spread thin for weeks or months, that a few hours in the ornate brass bed, curled up beside the little effigy on the pillow, would do him good. Sometimes it ended with his going in ( _sorry I’ve been away so long, brought you a present)._ The clerk chatted him up over the blanket, saying how rarely fathers had any idea what their children would like.

“Ah – well, I’m more the – indulgent uncle,” he’d replied. “No children of my own, you see. Never found the right – person, I suppose -- ” He wasn’t exactly babbling, but was grateful that the clerk held up a hand and said “I know exactly what you mean. We need the young to keep us young.”

Aziraphale, feeling every minute of his six thousand years and reflecting that he’d feel barely older when the clerk was dust, took his package and went home.

* * *

**_1941_ **

He was afraid to compound the damage done by consecrated ground, or he’d have tried a discreet miracle there in the car. Crowley hissed a little as he worked the clutch, and though the blast had left him as unspotted and unruffled as if he’d merely been walking through Golden Square, there was a streak of soot where he’d prised the valise out of Harmony’s hand and then touched his own face. It drew the angel’s gaze as they wove past the occasional dimmed headlamp or half-covered streetlight.

There was another quiet hiss as they braked in front of the shop.

“Come in,” he said. “Let me look after that for you. It must hurt.”

“Be okay, angel. Gotta be going. Leaving from Southampton early tomorrow, war work.”

“The mysterious Anthony Crowley?”

The demon’s smile was oddly brittle; of course there was no seeing whether it rose to his eyes. “My fame precedes me. As does yours.”

“I don’t follow – ?”

“Tonight. Your spy games couldn’t've made a bigger racket from Bletchley to Berlin if you’d been crashing through a warehouse full of empty oil drums. Which I had to do last week, ‘nother story. Leave diabolical scheming to the diabolical, okay?” Crowley reached across him, and for a moment time all but stopped, as it had in the Bastille – the trace of brimstone that always followed him flicking the angel’s nostrils open, Crowley’s breath ghosting over his cheek – but he was only working the door handle. “Get on inside, don’t want to sit in one place too long even with louvers on the headlamps.”

“It’s – ah – a beautiful car.”

“Coming from you that’s a lot. Heard you talk enough about _new fangled._ Here’s your books, get on, now.”

The scrape of his feet on the pavement sounded unnaturally loud. “Quite sure you won’t come in? I could make some tea…”

“Ring you when I get back, maybe. Dinner p’raps.”

How long had it been? “I – of course, my splash. I really don’t know how to thank you, Crowley.”

“Stay out of trouble,” said the demon, and pulled the door shut.

* * *

He didn’t keep rare books like these in the general collection, and didn’t feel like working through the wards of the vault in the cellar. One night upstairs wouldn’t hurt, the raids were done till tomorrow. He dropped the valise on the bedroom floor, feeling suddenly collapsed, knees actually buckling. Without remembering how he got there he was on the bed next to the stuffed doll.

“Clearly we need to keep you up with the styles,” he said. His fingers hardly obeyed his first attempt to snap. Before memory could blur, he miracled up a little dark-grey shirt, a jacket with padded-out shoulders, a fedora. The yarn didn’t agree with the hat and another miracle trimmed it closer.

“You look quite dashing now,” he said. “ _Anthony_.”

The shoes from Hamleys didn’t quite match the rest, and he found himself working them off; took out a handkerchief from his inside pocket, and tore away two small strips, wrapping one around each of the stuffed feet several times and tying neat bows. The doll, at least, would allow it.

“I wish I knew what was safe,” he said out loud. “If it’s all right to touch him. If my miracles would hurt him.”

He knew Crowley wouldn’t call. He pulled the doll against him as the room faded.

“See that I don’t get into trouble, Anthony,” he murmured. “Exchange of favours. Can’t come closer, can we? None of it’s safe. There’s just this.”

* * *

**_1967_ **

The call was unexpected, so it was puzzling how completely he’d been expecting it.

“You said we could go for a picnic. What about tomorrow? St. James’ Park, see how the ducks're getting on?”

He was a little baffled to discover that he trusted Crowley with the Holy Water. He’d sat in that Bentley again, still miracled to look and feel new, smelling of fresh leather. He’d seen Crowley’s expression through the repeating wash of orange and magenta neon, known it’d be all up if he’d given in to that importuning voice, _anywhere you want to go_ ( _thirteen inches to my right, Crowley, even angry and afraid for you as I am, who’d notice us, we’re in Soho)._

The picnic would be easier, he reasoned to himself as he rang off, with its genteel public privacy. Open air, a plaid blanket. He set the miniature one from Hamleys in the centre of the counterpane and reclined beside it, the way they had at Petronius’ villa; piece by piece changed the doll’s hair, miracled duplicates of the high-necked sweater, the trendy jacket. It was something to _do_ , other than wondering if he’d said the right things, extended the wrong offers, done as an angel should.

“Prawns, I think,” he mused aloud to the doll’s blank lenses. “And savoury olives, like the ones in Almeria. Perhaps some of that awful Portuguese blush that everyone’s drinking, it’s a picnic after all, it’s meant to be a trifle louche.” So that when Crowley sloped in the door of the shop, looking like a time traveler in his Carnaby Street kit, Aziraphale had only to pop up to the flat with its rarely used kitchen and bring down jars and tins and cartons out of the fridge, _I found some prawns in piquant sauce, and here’s a beautiful punnet of strawberries and a baguette from the stalls in Berwick Street Market, let's bring them along._

And so they slipped back into the comfort of the Arrangement, meeting every week in the park; then oftener, for late boozy nights in the shop, theatre excursions, _new restaurant opened last week, angel, got us a table_. They finished each other’s sentences, swiped at one another’s quirks, howled after the third bottle at impersonations of Gabriel and Beelzebub. If they quarreled, another bottle or the next morning settled it. Heaven and Hell barely troubled them. It felt as if they could go on like this till the End Of Days.

The Seventies and Eighties were boom times for Crowley: the first decade devoted to hedonism, the second to greed. In the Eighties, with some relief, the angel exchanged Anthony’s regrettable knit shirt and moustache for a black tee and a bomber jacket full of zippers, but they scraped his cheek when he tucked the doll close, and he swapped it out for the pin-striped black livery Crowley wore to tempt stockbrokers in the City. The years flitted, and he craved sleep less – Gabriel had started to act almost distracted by his reviews, eager to cover the essentials and get rid of him – so that Crowley’d been wearing that silver tie and shoulder-length hair for a year or two before he thought to update the doll with a miracle that he was now sure no one would notice.

And then he got the frantic phone call. Also unexpected, and not.

* * *

_**2008** _

Sobering up and having a plan didn’t lift the fatigue. It felt as if he were already living the labour of the next eleven years, and as the door of the bookshop chimed shut behind Crowley _(diabolus in musica),_ he thought of the white counterpane, the comforting pressure of Anthony’s poplin-and-batting corporation against his cheek. He’d almost slipped, there at the Ritz, seeing the way Crowley’s gaze followed him, thinking how close the End Of Days might be.

“What are you in the mood for now?” he half-whispered as he settled against the pillow, tugging the doll against his shoulder. He wasn’t sure if he was answering for Anthony or himself as he sank into sleep: “This. With you.”

* * *

He had never dreamed properly, when he did this; at most, only vague tissues of imagery and feeling, dispersing like mist before he was fully awake _._ But now he was aware that he was dreaming, as the humans did, and there was a sweetly taunting voice that said _It doesn’t have to be a dream,_ the same voice he’d been hearing all evening.

In the dream Crowley’s weight made the edge of the mattress dip, so that the angel sighed toward him; in the dream he set the doll gently aside on the nightstand with a quirked smile, _no more need for this, you have me now._ In the dream the touch of his lips and hands was as blistering as you’d expect of something that came out of Hell, and they were both naked as the angel never was in this bed, pressed together in a long embrace from breastbone to tangled feet, as if defying anything to come between them except the sweet ache of their own desire. “We can’t,” he said, even while he was counting the beads of the demon’s spine, moulding his sculptural perfection with palm and fingers, “they’ll know,” _Gabriel knows what I order for dinner,_ and Crowley said close to his ear “We can, and we will.”

It was a dream. Why shouldn’t he? He would pack a lifetime of kisses into this fleeting moment, offer himself utterly. He would touch that hair, bury his face in its scent, let that sorcerous tongue play over him as if it were sealing him with an ancient script, _this is the demon Crowley’s for ever and ever._ He would take this, the one earthly pleasure he’d never allowed himself, from the only being he’d ever wanted it with (oh yes, he always had, why else had he made an Effort if he were honest?), take it and make no contrition, he would –

The morning light blazed in the window, painting a square of whiter white on the threads of the coverlet. In the street below a dispute over rights-of-way was clearly being settled by the traditional weapons of automobile horns at twenty paces. He felt sweaty, like a human with a breaking fever, and the stubborn evidence of carnality was still trapped between him and the mattress. He willed his movements to stop, ragged breathing evening out, face pressed into the pillow.

_I worry about you going native, Aziraphale._

It seemed one did not always wake from sleep refreshed.

When he finally reached to lever himself up with one hand, it found the doll: tossed a little askew on the other pillow, limbs in a position that probably only Crowley, among all beings on earth, could or would have duplicated. Still stoically beaming, like those dolls you found in the park, tossed from prams as the Fallen had been tossed from Heaven – their expressions asking only _would you love me?,_ like the hopeful look Crowley had turned toward him on the walls of Eden.

The sight filled him with an unreasoning shame. Dolls were for the chaste, for children, for innocents, not for a hopeless bad angel who wanted a demon in his arms, wanted to feel the burn of his lips. In that moment he felt more Fallen than Crowley, and barely touched Anthony as he straightened the bed and leaned the doll against the pillows. “I’m sorry,” he said vaguely, unsure as to whom.

He went downstairs to look up the Dowlings in the directory. For the first time, he shut the bedroom door after him.

* * *

After that things moved very fast. There was no time to sleep, he told himself. The longer he stayed away from the bedroom, the easier it became to forget he ever had. He hadn’t thought of Anthony in months – really, a year – when Warlock's voice carried across the crewcut turf to the bench he shared with Nanny Ashtoreth in the afternoons. The young Antichrist was putting several small shapes through a series of encounters, accompanied by an unintelligible singsong.

“Is he playing with dolls? That seems promising.” _For children, for innocents._

 _“Action_ figures, angel. The Four Horsepersons, actually. Nanny got them specially for him.”

“I didn’t know you could get those in shops. Stealthy miracle?”

“Well, really some cartoon creature called Skeletor, and that's Red Sonja he's holding, she's as close to War as no matter. Famine’s really named Dr. Strange, and all right, I did miracle up a crown for Silver Sable, just like Pollution's supposed to wear. I told him all the stories I could make up about them, and he sends them on adventures together. Quite the imagination.”

Warlock had assembled the figurines, which had movable limbs that would stay in place, in a semi-circle in front of him, arranging for each to bow down. “He’s getting the windage,” approved Nanny.

“Couldn't he have a soft doll? The sort you can take to bed and, you know, ah, snuggle?”

He felt, more than saw, Nanny looking at him curiously, and wondered if he were blushing. Well, one took a lot of sun out here.

“Don’t believe his parents're that modern. We're all grown up and _manly_ now. He wanted me to do his nails like mine, too, and I told him I would, but Harriet wasn’t having it.”

“It seems a shame.”

“That’s because you’re soft, angel. Or did you mean the nail varnish?”

 _Soft._ Gabriel had said that more than once, not in a good way, now that things were heating up and he was back on Aziraphale’s case. Nanny clearly noticed his expression.

“ ‘S’ how you’re meant to be, _Brother Francis_. If anyone says differently, I'll give 'em a good caning.”

She rose and left then, collecting the little Son of Satan to wash up for supper.

_* * *_

**_2019_ **

Angels. They’d make appalling demands. Fling harsh words at you. Tear your heart, and then make you want to come back.

As Crowley had come back one last time for him. _We could go away together._

“Bloody _idiot,”_ he muttered, not sure whether he meant Crowley or himself, trying on a swear for size. The skylight didn’t darken. Maybe he’d try a stronger one in a moment. Time was short, after all.

Some of the books he needed were upstairs; the candles, too, just something he’d rather not keep down here, with all the antique volumes. He trudged up the spiral stair, collected everything, and as he’d known he would, looked into the bedroom.

Anthony gazed bravely up at him, exactly where he’d been left a decade earlier. The black clothes were filmed grey with dust; a cobweb crossed the left lens of the glasses, strung from one long yarn lock to another, and with an unidentifiable pang the angel sat down on the bed and gently brushed it away. He fluffed the dust off with his pocket handkerchief, sat the doll back against the pillow. He’d liked that long Rossetti hair – it reminded him of Eden – but this was one last small end to tie up, a few more seconds to steal before the test of a final, faint hope.

The yarn hair accepted his miracle, approximating Crowley’s as it was now, the forelock artfully ruffled (Aziraphale suspected a bit of product). He replaced the tortoise-rimmed dark glasses with the wraparound style Crowley sported currently, the grey shirt with a more open-throated black one.

“I hope you’re safe out there in the stars,” he said as he brushed the yarn just so over the poplin forehead.

He almost closed the bedroom door again on his way out, and then didn’t. He wasn’t sure why.

* * *

**_End Of Days_ **

****

He’d all but fallen asleep on the bus from Tadfield, beyond numb with weariness, able to focus only on random details. But sleeping wasn’t safe now, he fought it, and sat in a half-trance, with the motorway lights washing past as the lights of Soho had washed over Crowley's face so long ago. Now and again he looked envyingly at the demon, who’d slumped against his shoulder, drooling onto his morning coat, fingers still limply twined between his own. So touching him didn’t hurt.

He remembered thinking all those decades ago: _no longer raggedy._ Crowley was close to that now, his hair this way and that after his blaze down the motorway, the confrontation at the airfield; he was smudged, sharp with fear-sweat, and hadn’t cared enough to do much about it.

If touch didn’t hurt, a quiet miracle seemed safe. The most notice Crowley seemed to take was to shift in his sleep; but then, glasses askew where he’d lain against the angel’s shoulder, the yellow eyes showed as they flicked open.

“Angel?”

“Exchange of favours,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”

* * *

“I’ll get us a drink,” said Crowley as the door of the flat snicked shut behind them. The sleep seemed to have done him good. He snapped almost as an afterthought, bringing up low lights to accommodate their night-adapted eyes, starting a murmur of quiet music from some unseen source,.

“Ought we, do you suppose?” said Aziraphale. “Only we’ve got some thinking to do.” His own voice seemed to come from far away.

“And we might be for it in the morning, angel. Can’t think of a better place to start than a decent drink. Be just a tick, have a look round.”

There was extremely uncomfortable-looking furniture. There was a questionable piece of sculpture. There was a glassed-in cubicle, like a hothouse, except that the only plants he could see flanked the door, and -- “Is this ever where you _sleep?_ “ His eyes adjusted, and he stopped short.

“What, angel?”

The Bentley was always miracled to look like new, but not this. It was smudged by fingers, a little threadbare in places, like the ones you saw tipped out of prams. Well loved. Worn in.

“Got some ten year old Glenfiddich, bloody deserve it, we – angel, where are you? – _oh, hell, shitshit_ shit _, forgot that was there – ”_

The hair was a white-blond fluff, the felted wings half-limp and fuzzed; the eyes were pale-painted blue, the mouth a little V made from two stitches of glossy pink thread.

“I know, you must think it’s daft and – “ Crowley’s glasses glinted as he looked frantically around for someplace to set down the bottle and glasses. “ – s’pose maybe a little _creepy,_ well demons’re meant to be creepy really, so that’s all right ennit, just keepin’ in practice – “

“I, uh," Aziraphale broke in. "Have a doll.”

“ – ‘n’ it was just a joke really, I was going to – you _what?_ “

Aziraphale met his gaze, as best one could through those things.

 _“Had,”_ he corrected himself, lip beginning to tremble. Somehow this was the thing that was going to break him, and he was still standing a distance away from himself, _how peculiar, that angel’s going to cry,_ those dolls cast down from prams always looked so helpless and trusting, and now there might be only hours left and neither of them had said it –

"You. Have. A doll."

“His name is. Was. Anthony.” The words would barely come out. “Gone with the shop, now. I bought him in Hamleys. Red – red hair, you see, and I’d sleep with him on the pillow sometimes – “

“ _Sleep?_ Didn’t think you ever did, guardian ‘n’ that – “

“Only now and again – when I really just – _couldn’t_ any more and – “

“Oh, _angel.”_

Crowley’s arms were as wiry and strong as he’d always imagined. Tears _hurt._ This was interesting. A human thing. Your face hurt, and your throat hurt, and even the corners of your eyes hurt. It seemed to compound the misery, hard to know why She’d put that into their corporations, another piece of cruelty he’d never have imagined before today, perhaps? But Crowley’s fingers were tracking through the hair at the back of his head, he could tell the sunglasses were gone (he was pretty certain they’d been set down in the planter, next to the Glenfiddich and the Irish crystal), and the fine tremor that was going through him felt like something that had been straining for release for days if not centuries.

“ ‘s’okay, angel. Got you.”

 _You do,_ he thought as his breathing slowed, fishing for a handkerchief. Painful and _messy_ , this human business. “I – well, I – “

An angel’s not meant to kiss a demon, he thought, and then remembered Gabriel telling Adam: _You can’t refuse to be who you are._ But Adam had.

I can too, he thought.

It was a quiet, chaste kiss, differing only in duration from the kisses of greeting that had gone in and out of fashion for centuries. It seemed to hurt neither of them, and so he wanted it to go on forever. But then one needed to speak.

“When I saw you pick up that bit of iron – I thought we were done for then, I wanted to do this – “

“Bad form. Children present.”

He finally let himself meet the yellow eyes. They were a tiny bit sly. But then, Crowley _was_ a demon.

“Did you still, ah, want that drink?”

“Not right now,” said Crowley, and kissed him back.

Oh. This was why the mortals did it, with their fragile corporations that wouldn’t see a century. It made Time unimportant. He could feel the kiss through his whole body, and that was supposed to make you want, make you urgent to take, the way he'd wanted in his dream, wanted when he remembered it shamefacedly afterward. Now, though, he was content to feel the silent speech of their mouths and every echo of it in his body, without immediately needing to do anything about it.

Though eventually, of course, he did.

* * *

“I can’t explain it. That didn’t feel – well, as if we'd – it felt _holy_. The way it used to when we sang.” He winced immediately, remembering that for Crowley, the music of Heaven was only one of a thousand lost things; but the demon only rolled on one elbow and smiled mischievously.

“Wondered when you’d come round to that. You _did_ it after all, ‘n’ you’re an angel. Couldn’t do anything wrong.”

“It’s very kind of you to say so.”

“Are you fishing for _compliments,_ angel?”

“Ah – I – “

“Compliment you here. And here. And I think I forgot – _here_ – “

“Are you – “

“Be holy for me again.”

* * *

“You were asleep for a bit there.”

“You’d worn me out rather. It’s down to you that I can, really.”

A good while later, into the sheltering silence, he said, "I think I know what we have to do.” He explained.

“D’ye think we stand a chance?”

“I’m certain it's what Agnes meant. And now we can. Because I don’t feel sure where you end and I begin any more.” He pulled Crowley against him, pressed together along their length, as if in demonstration. “We can do this."

* * *

“And Adam really restored everything?”

The subdued clink of cutlery on the Ritz's china, the quiet tinkling of the baby grand's upper octaves, were like the sound of rain or waves, soothing and renewing.

“Down to the last book and teacup. Even the damned dust. You’ve got to let me at that place, going to be another Creation of Man if you don’t do something about the dust.”

"You'd only tempt them all over again, you wily serpent."

" _Sssssssss._ Tempting larger game these days, ta very much."

"Are you calling me stout? Because I am ordering from this dessert trolley in any event. _Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies,_ " Aziraphale said aside to the waiter, who was inured to cleverness from well-champagned diners.

" _Plentiful_ _,_ angel. Also perfect, just incidentally. 'n' I'll give a good caning to anyone who says differently."

They paid the staggering check and came out into the air just as the sun was setting on the first day of the rest of their lives; walked in silence for a bit.

“What are you in the mood for now?” said Aziraphale. “Please, don’t say dusting.”

Crowley’s fingers tightened a little in his. “I think I need to meet someone named Anthony. Hear he’s been sleeping with my angel.”

“It will be an honour to introduce you.”

They set off hand in hand across Berkeley Square.

_finis_

**Author's Note:**

> According to some sources the red hair didn't appear on the Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls until mid century. But other image searches show it, looking threadbare and original, on dolls from the 20s. I'm going with that. 
> 
> I imagined the angel doll as looking a bit like [this one ](https://i.pinimg.com/474x/69/08/aa/6908aa40466a79d73c85b58f2016f7d3--guardian-angels-blonde-hair.jpg).
> 
> Go check out Sir_Bedevere 's adorable fic, [Speed Demon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24524872), which he wrote for me when I was going in for a really obnoxious hospital stay in June. Thank you Sir B, I hope I showed my appreciation. (KannaOphelia wrote a lovely one for the same occasion, which is still updating -- find it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24499030/chapters/59137756).)
> 
> If you enjoyed, share, reblog, comment! Come hassle me on Tumblr @CopperPlateBeech


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